TV TRIVIA

There Was Almost a Seinfeld Episode About Fanny Packs

Gather ’round, pop culture nerds, and let former Seinfeld writer Carol Leifer tell you about an episode of the legendary 90s sitcom that never quite came to fruition. While answering questions on Reddit two days ago, Leifer—the comedian rumored to be the inspiration for Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Elaine character—revealed that she pitched an episode devoted partially to the regrettable 90s-era accessory, the fanny pack.

There was a storyline that I really wanted to do when I worked at
Seinfeld, you know so much of the ideas there were inspired from real life and I knew that if I pitched something and it happened in
real life I would have a bit of an edge. So at the time, fanny packs
were really popular, and I remember wearing my fanny pack under a
t-shirt one day, and wherever I went people were exceedingly nice,
letting me go in front of them in line, letting me go first wherever I
was, and then I realized at the end of the day my giant fanny pack
under my t-shirt made me look pregnant! So I always thought it would
be a great Elaine story if she started to use that, the fanny pack, as
a way to make her day in New York a lot less taxing, you know -
getting the first taxi because she looked pregnant, getting concert
tickets first because people saw her standing in line, and I think
they always liked the notion of it but it never became an episode. So
I love those ideas about Seinfeld because nobody has fanny packs
anymore, so it really was specific to the time (except dweebs who wear
fanny packs).

In addition to sharing that anecdote, Leifer reminisced about her all-time favorite episode of the series.

My favorite Seinfeld episode is The Marble Rye, it was an episode
that I am credited with but I always say this with a grain of salt
because Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld re-wrote every episode of
Seinfeld themselves, so the episode you see on TV came from their pens last. But it was a really fun episode because we shot it at
Paramount Studios, we spent about a million dollars to shoot the
episode (which was an OUTRAGEOUS amount of money at the time to spend
on an episode) and Kramer drove the cab in that episode, Elaine dated
the saxaphone player who had so much oral sex with her that it ruined
his saxaphone playing, it was really a blast.

And she also comments on whether she actually has anything in common with Elaine, the character she is said to have inspired: ”[A]s far as direct comparisons go, look: I’m a very good dancer, I don’t push people halfway across the room when I’m surprised, so there you go.”